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Tag Archives: Beatrix Potter

As I enter in into FAT2, I wanted to think about where my relationship with picturebooks started.For me as a child I was intrigued and my imagination was captured by the creation of Beatrix Potters characters and stories. Jeremy Fisher, Jemima Puddle Duck, Peter Rabbit and Mrs Tiggy Winkle, to name just a few. The tales of there mishaps and predicaments, that always ended well.

As I sit and think about what drew me to the tales, I know it was the thought of talking animals, the familiarity of Beatrix Potters surroundings that I could relate to, the characters which were brimming over with personality, the way a simple animal could tell such a story. As a small child it captured my imagination and allowed me to escape into a different land full of adventure, and things to see. This for me is the most important part, the escapism, the space for the imagination to expand, the space created by Beatrix Potter for the reader to adjust the story so it felt like each rabbit I saw could be part of peter rabbits family, and the grumpy farmer in the village was Mr McGregor.

Clements (2013) talks about the relationship between text and image as internaimation and stated

“…inter animation engages the reader’s visual imagination to make connections and provide a shape to what is seen optically on the individual page, pair of pages, entire book; it is, in essence, what invites the redaer to co-create the story.” (p.57)

Holding Clement’s thoughts in mind and my reflections of how the scenes depicted by Beatrix Potter were similar to my surroundings, brings me to think about when working how to create stories where the reader can take it to a place of familiarity for them, they to can “co create” the story and gain a interpersonal relationship with the narrative.